If you wanna know how to get rock hard abs, then you are readin’ the right article my friend because I’m going to reveal my best hard ab secrets right here on this page!
The Legend of The Soft Six Pack…
Here’s the story: there’s this guy that works out at my friend’s martial arts school. He is REALLY lean, like probably around 7-8% body fat all the time… really tall… just a really lean guy. So he’s got an excellent “six pack”, his abs are always rippling and whatnot.
Then one day my OTHER friend, who is not so lean, poked the lean guy in the stomach when he was flexing his abs and they weren’t that hard at all!
My friend was astonished at the big difference between his own rock hard stomach (although not as lean) and how “soft” this guy’s six pack was.
What made the difference?
Traditional Ab Training Does Little To Get You Rock-Hard Abs
Most people when they think of “training abs” will think of doing situps, crunches, leg-ups, etc in an effort to really “work” those core muscles.
Hell, they might even buy one of those stupid bosu balls or some other “ab gadget” from T.V. and try to use those too…
I’m not saying you won’t work your “core” like this because you will… and combined with enough cardio and the right eating lifestyle, you can get your body fat low enough to start getting that coveted “six pack” look.
But you won’t get rock hard abs that way!
What To Do Instead
Instead of spending so much time doing those ab exercises, focus first on doing the full-body, most effective strength training exercises with heavy weights — namely the Squat and the Deadlift.
You see when you put hundreds of pounds on your shoulders and attempt to move it through space, your “core” must stabilize this heavy load — and learning how to develop and use what is called “intra-abdominal pressure” is what will give you the rock hardness you want in your abs.
See, even though my not-so-lean friend didn’t have a carved out six pack, his stomach was a LOT harder when you hit it, because we’ve worked out together and we always did squats and deadlifts while this other “ripped” guy didn’t.
Ab Accessory Exercises For Rock Hard Abs
In addition to doing full body strength training exercises that require you to learn how to develop internal pressure in your abdomin and entire core region, there are some other exercises which will teach your body how to become “solid” — or else you won’t be able to do the exercises:
- Ab planks will teach you how to keep your body solid and keep the internal pressure up…
- Ab wheel rollouts will definitely teach you how to stay tight…
- One arm pushups and one legged squats require a great deal of learning how to “stay tight” and ab work for stability…
- Any overhead movements such as overhead pressing, turkish getups, snatches, clean and jerks, etc will work your abs from a stabilizing angle and get them hard (the heavier the weight the harder the abs)
Puttin’ It Together!
So instead of focusing on doing all those rinky dinky ab exercises, your workout schedule might look something like this to get those rock-hard abs:
- M,W,F: Strength Training — making sure to either squat or deadlift each time you work out. Some assistance ab work
- T, Th, S: Interval Cardio – to burn away fat to unveil those abs, and heavy accessory work on new ab exercises you haven’t done before and any crunches and “rinky dinky” ab exercises you wanna do.
- Every Day – control what goes in your mouth so you lose fat and can see those rock-hard abs…
So there you go, that’s a pretty simple explanation (and full on game plan) for you if you wanna know how to get rock hard abs.
